The 2010-2011 academic year was the 150th anniversary of the formation of the Italian state, and so I was particularly busy with a talk about “Verdi and the Risorgimento,” which I presented (in one form or another) at a conference on Opera and Nation in Budapest, at the University of Pisa (Alfredo Banti’s seminar), in Florence (in a series sponsored by the publisher, Laterza), in Turin at the Palazzo Madama (home to the first Italian Parliament in 1861, in which Verdi sat), and in several other venues. I also published a volume of music, with a long introduction, entitled: “Edizioni distrutte”: Cori del Risorgimento italiano. It will be officially presented in Turin and Milan in September 2011, with a concert derived from it for the MiTo Festival. I worked again at the Caramoor Festival in New York (giving lectures, public and private, and coaching singers), where they presented Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. The edition of Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle, prepared by myself and Patricia Brauner for Bärenreiter, won the Palisca award as the finest musical edition of the year from the American Musicological Society. And there are simply too many projects for the future to keep them all straight (including the first performance during the summer of 2012 at the Santa Fe opera of our new edition of Rossini’s Maometto II). We’ll publish this year Verdi’s Attila and Rossini’s Le comte Ory, both of which have been performed from the new editions (the Verdi under Riccardo Muti at the Met, the Rossini with Cecilia Bartoli in Zürich). They call this being “retired”? Hah!

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The Department of Music would like to thank all of the alumni and friends who have graciously donated to the Department. Their gifts have helped support our students in numerous and important ways; to developing a dissertation proposal, to travel to a conference and present a scholarly paper, or to have a new composition performed. Every gift makes a difference. Thank you for your support.